Sunday, March 27, 2011

Parachute Animation

What will happen to Flyboy? Stay tuned!




I was concerned this piece wouldn't work out, but whatever the flaws (and there are flaws) they don't matter much in motion. Notice I shift the timing around, from twos at the beginning, to threes when he gets knocked the other way, back to twos then to ones as he gains momentum toward the other direction. I'm a big fan of shaking up timing like that.

Also, an old flipbook piece from a class this semester. I really could have done more with the coat at the beginning, but I dig it.


Thursday, March 24, 2011

An Old Sketch Gets a Color Makeover


To tell the truth, I really don't know very much about color. I put this together in photoshop as an excercize, looking at Sergio Leone's work, in an attempt to start myself on the path to understanding the wacky world of translating the colors of reality to the skewed world of cartooning. It's no great shakes, but I am putting together some nice midtones and highlights, particularly on the coat. Maybe this Summer I'll find time to paint for real and get my color chops up to speed.

Future Boy Conan Animations

Conan's design is nice and simple, though one still needs to know a bit about human anatomy to make him work. I don't draw specific established characters all that much, but I figure it would help to learn a bit about individual style if I did it a bit more.







Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Yet More!

B-SIDES!!! Footage from the Director's Cut! Uncut, uncensored and full frontal!












Random Animation from my New Project

For those hotly anticipating my new project, "Speed 3: Rickety Rocket"








Thursday, March 3, 2011

Little "putting on a helmet" animation...

Nothing fancy (I'm lying, there's a lot going on here and it still doesn't look perfect).


Tuesday, March 1, 2011


A Hard Day's Night suffers woefully from being set during the Mop-Top days of The Beatles. Indeed, Richard Lester's New Wave-influenced cinematography and editing would have been much better served by such set pieces as John Lennon tripping out on peyote and Paul McCartney shouting at his bandmates and calling them idiots before storming out of the studio. Ringo would still be pretty much the same.

Actually, this is a mightily impressive piece of work on a cinematographic and editing level, though it took me a second viewing to notice since my first time through was fixated on the gags. Which is just as well, because this is one funny movie beyond its influence on the aesthetics of everything from MTV to independent film to Monty Python's Flying Circus. But although it's humorous and slightly subversive to see George Harrison decry the fakeness of pandering to a manufactured youth in one scene, it's even more subversive to see the way Lester depicts the television crew's own manufacturing of the image The Beatles.

Which isn't to suggest this is an especially profound film. It's a promotional through and through, but it's a likable, tongue-in-cheek, and technically innovative one. Of course, The Beatles got far more experimental in their music as they went along, and I think it makes sense that they'd welcome an experimental film like this as part of their image earlier on. I'm not sure if I like it more than Yellow Submarine, which is on another plane entirely and might as well be a product unto itself, but as one of many Beatles fans I manage to get more enjoyment out of the film than merely watching The Beatles fart about.

Interesting how the usual odd man out actually gets the most attention. Ringo's bigger than Paul as far as these films go. By the way, who the hell was Wilfrid Brambell? He practically almost steals this from The Beatles.

What I did Today....

It all goes by so quickly.....